THE NATION: High Cost of Convenience

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In a brief three or four days after Presidential Assistant Sherman Adams' dealings with Boston Operator Bernard Goldfine were first brought to light, President Eisenhower had a chance to accept or demand Adams' resignation and preserve the "hound's tooth" moral standards of his Administration. But he decided to keep New Hampshire-Man Adams principally for reasons of convenience: "I need him" (TIME, June 30). By this week the cost of convenience had risen prohibitively high.

In accepting Adams' explanations, the President, whether he liked it or not, automatically went bail for Adams' faith in Textile and Real Estate Millionaire Goldfine, Adams' friend and benefactor. That done, the Administration was stuck with whatever Goldfine might really turn out to be. What Bernard Goldfine turned out to be in his testimony last week before the House Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight (see Investigations) was a cheap and devious character—a fast man with a buck, whether to manipulate the financial fortunes of his numerous mills and real estate holdings or to distribute gifts to public employees, mostly little, who might do him some good in his chronic run-ins with Government.

Having Bernard Goldfine hung around its political neck was not all the Administration paid for convenience. The ethical standards applied to Sherman Adams now had to be applied to lesser Government employees. Last week's hearings revealed that two secretaries, one of them a secretary to Adams who worked within 75 feet of the President's desk, had received Goldfine checks, ranging from $35 to $75. They could hardly be fired, indeed, they could hardly be reprimanded—least of all by their staff chief, Sherman Adams, by whom Goldfine had done better. The Administration was on a hook, partly by deliberate choice. And there no longer seemed to be any easy way to get off it.